


Timing. Temerity. Tupperware.

by marginaliana



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Fix-It, Gen, fest fic, tupperware
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Aren't you going to, you know, sonic it at least? You said they could look like anything."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timing. Temerity. Tupperware.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wyomingnot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyomingnot/gifts).



**Timing**  
"What about in here?" said Clara, opening the door to the temp agency's break room.

The Doctor poked his head in. "Nah," he said. "Not here."

"Aren't you going to, you know, sonic it at least? You said they could look like anything."

"And you think if they could choose to look like anything, they'd go for this?" he said, but stepped into the room anyway. "It's so... domestic. More likely they're out there where the shiny things are. And don't say sonic like it's a verb, by the way."

Clara followed him, letting her gaze travel across the room. She noted absently a stack of romance novels on one end of the rickety table, the pile of red-lidded containers labeled 'for Friday's Tupperware party – do not touch.' 

"Maybe you've got a point," she said, and then, "about the domestic, I mean. There's nothing wrong with using sonic as a verb. Get with it, gramps."

The Doctor waved the sonic screwdriver briefly around the room, then frowned and reached over to give one of the Tupperware containers a poke with the tip of it.

Snap!

The lid of the container closed itself abruptly, and the Doctor only just managed to jerk the screwdriver out of the way in time. 

"Uh oh," said Clara.

Snap! Pop! 

Another of the boxes closed its lid, then popped it open again menacingly.

Snap! Snap! Pop! Snap! Pop! Snap!

The door to the break room crashed open behind them. Clara turned, her half-prepared excuse to explain their presence at the ready, but the red-haired woman who stood in the doorway somehow didn't seem like the type to be snowed under by fast-talking. She was wearing a suit, though it had far more pockets than women's clothing was usually built with, and she had a blue Tupperware box held under one arm. "Well, what are you waiting for, Spaceman?" she said. "Run!"

 

**Temerity**  
They got the break room door shut, and the Doctor sealed the lock with the sonic screwdriver just as the pile (School? Flock? What _was_ the appropriate collective noun for a group of murderous plastic storage containers?) of Tupperware clattered against it. The plastic made a hollow, menacing sound against the metal.

"Donna!" the Doctor said, almost a gasp as he slumped against the far wall of the hallway.

"No time for a touching reunion," said Donna. "They'll switch to something else in a minute and then we'll be for it. Any ideas?"

"What about that one you've got?" Clara asked suspiciously, indicating the container Donna carried. "How do we know that's not a— what were they called again?"

"Brookesiinae," said Donna, before the Doctor could answer. "And I brought this one with me. It's how I knew they weren't the real thing. They didn't get the details quite right."

The door abruptly stopped rattling. The sudden silence seemed even more menacing than the noise had been. "What are they doing now?" Clara whispered.

"Changing shape," the Doctor hissed. "It isn't instant, so we've got a minute, maybe two."

"Well, think of something quick, then," Clara said.

"The only thing we can do is trap them in the form they're in, somehow."

"What, like, chain them up?"

"No, no," the Doctor said impatiently. "They'll just change to get out of that. It has to be something inherent to the form itself."

Drip.

"What was that?"

"Sounded like—"

Drip. Drip. Drip. 

"—liquid."

The noise of the slow drip sped up, turned into a rivulet and then a splash, as if, on the other side of the door, someone had dumped out the contents of a bucket onto the floor.

"It's coming under the door!" Donna said. When Clara looked, she could see Donna was right – a small puddle was beginning to form in the crack between the bottom of the door and the linoleum floor.

"What's it going to do, dampen us to death?" Clara said.

"No, but it could turn into something else once it's all here," the Doctor said grimly. "A cyberman, for instance."

"Ah," said Clara. "Right. Wonderful."

Donna appeared to be ignoring this exchange; instead, she was digging in her pockets for something, first the one on the bottom right, then right middle, then upper right. "Where is it, where is it?" she muttered. "Honestly, I swear these pockets were organized just yesterday. You know who I picked up all these bad habits from? Yeah, you, Spaceman. You'd lose your own h— oh, here we go." She pulled something out of her left upper jacket pocket with a flourish. 

Despite being a little shorter and with fewer toggles than the one Clara was familiar with, it was somehow still unmistakably a sonic screwdriver.

"Oi, watch where you're pointing that thing," said the Doctor. "Where did you get that, anyway?"

Donna rolled her eyes. "I made it, how else? You can't just go to Sonic Screwdrivers 'R' Us, you know. Well, not in this century." She pointed the screwdriver at the now quite sizable puddle of not-actually-water that was still seeping under the door to the kitchenette. "Right, should be setting 357-Q."

Nothing obvious happened, but after a moment Clara felt herself shiver as the air around them went cold. The progress of the puddle's edge slowed and then stopped entirely. A faint frost blossomed on its surface.

"Brilliant!" said the Doctor. A spiderweb of cracks began at one corner of the ice, but another jab from the sonic screwdriver halted the movement.

"It was pretty great the way she just _sonic-ed_ it," said Clara. 

The Doctor made a pained noise but otherwise ignored her. "I suppose it was the bits of me in there that thought of it," he said to Donna.

"Don't flatter yourself," said Donna. "That bit was all me. If it'd been you, then you'd've thought of it yourself, eh?"

Clara couldn't find any flaw in that logic, and by the sour twist to the Doctor's mouth, she could tell he couldn't, either.

 

**Tupperware**  
"So," Clara said. They'd swept up the Brookesiinae ice into a couple of garbage bags scavenged from the agency's supply closet, then hauled the bags into the TARDIS and dumped them out again in the blackness of space somewhere over a barren, nameless hunk of asteroid.

("Is this going to kill it?" Clara asked, and Donna and the Doctor shook their heads nearly in unison. "Nah," the Doctor said. "It'll just stay frozen out here. Maybe if it drifts close enough to the asteroid it'll skim the atmosphere and melt enough to change again. But there's nothing down there that it can harm.")

"Well done us, then," Clara continued, dusting off her hands. She elbowed the Doctor gently. Or perhaps not _that_ gently. "You _are_ going to introduce me properly now, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes, right," he said, turning away from them both to fiddle with the console unnecessarily. "Clara Oswald, Donna Noble. And vice versa."

Clara met Donna's eyes and they shared a glance of exasperated understanding. "I'm his latest assistant," Clara said. "Or caretaker, or minion, or whatever you like to call it."

"I expect he'd say friend," Donna said. "That's what he always says in his head, anyway."

"Right, absolutely no talking about me," said the doctor. "I didn't give you permission to do that!"

Donna ignored him. "But I'm glad he's got you. He'll get himself into far too much trouble running 'round on his own."

"Speaking of trouble," the Doctor said sharply, turning back around. "Donna, how are you here? How much do you—" He cut himself off, but Donna just laughed.

"How much do I remember? Enough to be right hacked off at you, that's for sure. I took out the extra bits."

"How?"

Donna tapped her fingertips lightly on the Tupperware container she still had tucked under one arm. "Oh, you know, these things'll hold anything you like, really."

"You put a thousand years' worth of time lord memories in a plastic box?" He said, outraged.

"Yep," Donna said, popping the P. Clara laughed.

"Have you really got half his memories in there?"

"More like two thirds," Donna admitted. "I was in a bit of a rush to get them out of here." She tapped the side of her head as lightly as she had the Tupperware.

"And is either of you going to tell me the story of how that happened?"

"Oh, there was a thing," said the Doctor, flapping one hand in the air. "It was complicated."

Donna gave Clara another exasperated look, but before she could say anything else, the Doctor pushed off the console and came to stand beside them. "So what now?" he said. "You joining up?" He waved a careless hand to indicate the TARDIS. 

Clara felt herself stiffen. The thing was, she actually liked Donna. But she wasn't sure she wanted someone else swanning about the TARDIS like they owned the place. Even if Donna did – by virtue of having all the Doctor's memories – actually possibly sort of own the place.

Donna didn't give any indication of noticing what Clara was thinking, but her reply, when it came, was deliberately casual. "Oh, I wouldn't mind a trip or two, just for old time's sake. But what I really want—" She dug into yet another of her many pockets. "—is your help with this."

When she drew her hand out, it was holding a very small, very brown, piece of coral.

"Oh, you beauty!" said the Doctor, scooping it out of her hand.

"Oi, watch it!" said Donna. "If you break that, I can't just sonic it back together, you know."

"See?" said Clara triumphantly. "Sonic _is_ a verb."

"I'm never going to win an argument with the two of you around," the Doctor grumbled, but he was smiling.


End file.
